European History Quarterly

The consumption of food and drink was suffused with political meaning in the new culture of revolution. This article explores tensions arising from the dining culture of revolutionary politicians at a time when the activity of politics had become subject to public scrutiny. A deputy’s approach to food, and especially to the social activity of dining, was used to judge his authenticity. Conspicuous consumption by deputies became a source of conflict between a hungry populace and its elected representatives. Cafés and restaurants, together with private dinner parties (‘behind closed doors’), were locations where the tactical business of politics could be conducted, yet such venues were seen as redolent of Old Regime practices and against the culture of transparency. Deputies who were seen to engage in excessive consumption and attend select dinner parties, especially with ‘suspect’ characters, were vulnerable to the charge that they were engaging in a conspiracy against the Republic.

This article examines French informal-imperial ambitions in the River Plate from 1838 to 1852. It argues France achieved considerable influence, and that a shared liberal understanding of ‘civilization’ drove French politicians, diplomats and journalists to promote deeper imperial connections with the region. This ideology was an important antecedent to the colonial civilizing mission of the Third Republic. It also had supranational appeal and was adopted and adapted by Platine elites, such as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Juan Bautista Alberdi, to further their own political projects with French support. Thus, for these politicians, France was not an imperial aggressor, but rather the defender of ‘European civilization’.

This paper analyses how banking regulation was introduced in Switzerland – one of the world’s most prominent financial centres – which remained in place until the beginning of the twenty-first century. It shows that the law adopted on 8 November 1934 is a perfect example of capture of the regulator by the regulated. Essentially a political response in the context of the economic crisis of the 1930s, it largely reflected the interests of banking circles by limiting the intervention of the State as much as possible. The introduction of the new legislation was facilitated by the temporary weakness of Swiss banking circles, as they depended on the State to delay or prevent the collapse of many major credit institutions. They did not manage to derail the law as they had two decades earlier when they scuppered the federal bill on banks drawn up between 1914 and 1916. But this time they were better organized and more united, and intervened all the more effectively in the legislative process itself. The 1934 law is thus distinctive in that it made no structural changes to the architecture of the financial centre but merely codified its practices through flexible legislation meant to reassure the public. The law was aimed less at controlling banking activity than at keeping – thanks to skilfully calibrated political concessions – the State from having to intervene more directly in the internal management of banks or in the fixing of interest rates and the export of capital.

This article reassesses the foreign exchange trials and concurrent propaganda campaign in 1935–36 against the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany. Scholars have had difficulties situating the foreign exchange trials within the church struggle because most have viewed the proceedings as legitimate and the impact on the church and the laity as negligible. The argument of an untainted justice system under National Socialism can of course no longer be sustained, and the Nazis routinely used specific crimes to persecute their enemies. The violation of Germany’s complex foreign exchange laws became a signature crime favoured by the Security Service in the persecution of Jews. In 1935, the regime attempted to use accusations of foreign exchange violations in pursuit of the church. New evidence from the Vatican Archives reveals that the foreign exchange trials against the church were anything but legitimate proceedings on the margins of the church struggle. Instead, the regime pursued immediate and specific political goals with the trials at a crucial point in the conflict. In particular, the regime attempted to force the church to publicly capitulate on unresolved issues over Catholic lay associations. Hitler routinely interfered in the proceedings and lower-ranking officials soon joined in and used the trials to discipline bishops and religious orders within their respective spheres of influence. The bishops’ often ill-considered response to the trials only escalated the crisis within the church, and evidence indicates that the regime delayed settlements for as long as possible to press church leaders to make further concessions to the regime.

The article provides an overview of the most recent scholarship on nation building in Ukraine during the long nineteenth century. One of the most important tendencies is the rise of what might be called the neo- or post-statist paradigm that underlines the relevance of early modern legacies for nineteenth-century activism and qualifies the image of Ukraine as a typical East and Central European, non-historical nation. As a result, the emphasis has shifted from the Austrian to the Russian Empire. Also, these new studies tend to pay much more attention to the transnational and entangled qualities of politics in nineteenth-century Ukraine. Nevertheless, contributions focusing on the ‘non-historical-nation’ aspects of the question still bring important insights and cannot be disregarded. The liminal position of Ukraine makes it especially well suited to serve as a testing ground for some received wisdoms about European nation building in general. Apart from considering the limitations of and the possible gains from present-day scholarship, the article offers some thoughts on how the political-military crisis might impact the study of Ukrainian nation building in the future.